Marine One

13

WHEN YOU GET sued in federal court, you have to file an answer denying the claims made against you. In Annapolis, when you file it, you quickly learn that you have stepped onto the six-month conveyor belt that will take you to trial no matter how much you thrash or complain. It's like a melodrama where the heroine is tied to the moving belt in a sawmill heading toward the large, spinning blade.

Since most court filings are now electronic, things happen in hours, or minutes. Fifteen minutes after I filed our answer, we received a notice by e-mail from the court for the Early Neutral Evaluation conference to be held that same week. The purpose of the ENE before the magistrate was to see if the case could quickly be settled, or if it would go to trial. We had drawn the magistrate I knew best, Barbara Norris. She was competent, did not aspire to greater office-unlike many magistrates-and didn't inject her personality into the case. She just tried to do what was right, get the case resolved if she could, and if not, help the parties get to trial quickly. You couldn't ask for anyone better.

The day for the conference came. Rachel and I got there early, but not earlier than the press. It looked like a rehearsal for the trial they suspected was coming. Satellite vans were everywhere, cables and cameras running back and forth, and an amazing amount of activity for a hearing they wouldn't be invited to. ENEs are generally held in the magistrate's office, not in the courtroom.

After we made our way into the courthouse, we were ushered into the magistrate's courtroom. Margaret, Norris's clerk, closed the doors behind us, keeping the press outside in the hall. As Rachel and I entered, we saw that Hackett and his entourage were already there. Hackett was standing with his back to the judge's bench, looking at us as we walked in. Waiting for us. When he saw me, he said nothing and did nothing. He just stood there holding his briefcase in front of him with both hands. His feet were spread slightly apart, and I was suddenly aware of his size. He had to be at least six feet four and had graying blond hair that he combed back. To his right was another partner that I recognized from Hackett's firm's Web site. Gregory Bass-pronounced like the fish, not the guitar. Bass was about forty with a closely buzzed haircut. He was known in all the articles I had read as Hackett's "bulldog." Their word. He didn't try cases, he just chopped up the other side in motions, depositions, and generally being as tough as he could get away with.

On Hackett's left was an attractive woman, medium height and attentive. Probably a paralegal. I didn't recognize her. The first lady was of course not there, nor was any representative of WorldCopter. This was a meeting for attorneys only.

I looked at Hackett, looked at Bass, looked at his paralegal, and glanced over their shoulders to the judge's law clerk, whom I saw looking from the door in the corner.

Since Hackett hadn't said anything to me, I returned the favor. I saw Margaret heading to the door out of the courtroom that led to the magistrate's chambers-Norris's office-and said, "I think we're all here, Margaret."

She nodded as she continued through the door, sparing me the remark that was undoubtedly on her tongue, that she had already figured that out and it accounted for her heading to the door. I, of course, knew that too, but wanted, in a childish way, to show Hackett that I knew the magistrate's clerk.

I pointed Rachel to a row of seats in the back of the courtroom. We sat down and took out copies of the filings that we had delivered to the court the week before. They were fairly innocuous, committed us to nothing, and left all roads open to us. It gave us something to do.

Hackett stood there and looked at us. After he realized I wasn't going to say anything to him, he seemed just slightly flustered. He turned around and walked through the swinging door between the gallery and the counsel tables in the courtroom, then placed his briefcase on the top of the table. He sat down in one of the counsel seats, and Bass followed suit. The woman went with them, but stood at the far end of the table looking through a notebook.

Margaret came back through the door and said, "Please come into the chambers." Hackett and his two acolytes went immediately into the chambers and the door closed behind them. Rachel and I got up from our seats, walked to the door, opened it, and entered. Magistrate Norris recognized me immediately and said, "Good morning, Mike, nice to see you again." She then turned to Hackett and said, "And you must be Mr. Hackett."

While Annapolis is the capital of Maryland, it is still a small town. The attorneys all know each other, and those of us who try cases regularly know all the judges and they all know us. Our reputations are already established, good or bad. This magistrate would almost qualify as a friend, not that we got together socially, but we saw eye to eye on most things, and she knew I didn't take ridiculous positions.

She motioned for us to all sit down on the couches and chairs placed around the coffee table in the corner of her office. It was the largest magistrate office in the small federal courthouse because she was the senior magistrate judge. Three of the walls were lined with law books, and the other wall had two colorful paintings.

The magistrate smiled at Rachel, who had appeared before her about five times. Hackett noticed and was irritated again. Norris led us through the conference professionally and quickly. We discussed what needed to be done, what discovery we anticipated, what motions might come, the primary issues in the case, and the usual civil concerns. But after fifteen minutes of the usual, with the attorneys only responding to the magistrate's questions, she said to Hackett, "One of the reasons we hold these conferences is to assess the likelihood of settlement. What are your thoughts?"

Hackett almost smiled. "My thoughts are simple. We made a time-sensitive demand, and they rejected it. I told them there would be no other offer, and I meant it. So in short, the case will not settle. We are preparing for trial."

Norris was surprised. She asked Hackett and his group to leave so she could speak to Rachel and me alone. After the door closed behind Hackett and the chambers were quiet, she said to me, "Mr. Nolan, have you seen the press? Have you seen how many people there are standing outside this courthouse this morning? This case is going to be a circus. You know that?"

"That's exactly what Hackett wants."

She didn't respond. She took a sip of coffee from the mug on the table in front of her. "I think Mr. Hackett is right. This case is going to trial."

I waited.

"Mr. Nolan, do you have any settlement authority to even begin discussions?"

"No, I don't, Your Honor. AII and WorldCopter rejected his offer out of hand and told him so. There have been no further discussions because he says not to bother. I knew you'd ask and I tried to get some authority, but we really don't know what caused the accident yet. Hackett has filed prematurely. He's in a big hurry."

"The United States government has determined what the cause is, even if it's preliminary, the first lady has asked for compensation, and WorldCopter, the company that killed the president, is stonewalling. That's what he's going to sell. You understand that?"

"Yes, ma'am, I do. We can only do so much and at a certain pace. The NTSB's findings are flawed, and we're working on the cause. I think they may have it completely wrong. I just can't prove it yet."

"What was his demand?"

"One billion dollars."

She couldn't hide her surprise. "For seven wrongful death cases? Even if one of them is the president. I guess it depends on how much you project a retired president would make, but I would think these cases altogether can't be worth more than one hundred or one hundred fifty million dollars." She frowned. "It's amazing how many cases resolve when you force them to go to trial. And I mean force. Motions for continuing trials are denied. Judge Baxter denied one last week even though one of the attorneys had a death in the family. He put in the order that it was sad, but the attorney wasn't the lead attorney and the death wasn't from her immediate family." Norris smiled. "So these dates are written in stone. And I expect Judge Betancourt will have no interest in dragging this out. A circus is bad enough. A circus that goes on too long is much worse. You do understand that?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

The magistrate stood up and walked toward the door. "I will now speak with Mr. Hackett and see if I can encourage him to approach you with a new settlement demand. I don't expect him to. I do not think this trial will benefit the country or heal the wound that is currently bleeding. But I believe he thinks the fact the wound is open and hurting is better for him. I will try to dissuade him of that notion." She looked up as she put her hand on the door before we went out into the courtroom. "Mr. Nolan, if you think that you can find the cause of the accident that differs from the NTSB's preliminary conclusion, I'd suggest you find it very quickly. If this case goes to trial, it is going to be the biggest case in the history of our civil court system. Don't let that happen."

The next morning at six thirty I met Tinny at the Blue Mug, a coffee shop I knew by the waterfront. I went with some trepidation-he said he was bringing a "friend." I didn't know what to make of that. Byrd scared me. He dug stuff up and found people that I had no idea where they'd come from or how he'd done it. But he had saved my ass several times. This time, much to my surprise, he brought someone I had already spoken to: Jason Britt. They were waiting for me when I arrived. I shook Tinny's hand and then Britt's as I said to him, "What the hell are you doing here?"

I looked at Tinny, who was controlling a smile. He said, "Let's get some coffee. I had to leave at an ungodly hour to get here."

"I thought you didn't want to meet in public."

"Nah, we're early. It's cool."

We ordered and sat at the table in the front that looked through the windowpanes over the water. Byrd said, "So I asked Britt here what you talked about and he told me. You left a lot of things unasked, Nolan. As usual. So I started over. He told me some things that I think you ought to hear. Some more things about your boy Collins."

I looked at Britt, who looked a little bit uncomfortable but also excited. It's funny how some people respond to being a witness in a big case. A lot of people run the other way. They want nothing to do with testifying. Others respond in exactly the opposite way. Suddenly they're the center of attention. Suddenly everybody hangs on every word. Everybody wants to know what they think. They'll be called in a trial and be on world television. Some people love that. It's a problem because it can affect their testimony. It can make them bend the truth or embellish it, so that they are more interesting, or in demand, or, worse, more notorious. Some witnesses even imagine themselves being so popular and in demand that after "this is all over," as they all say, they'll write a book about it. They actually believe that they will have an audience for a book that they will write about what they know. They're almost certainly wrong about that, but they believe it in their hearts. So when a witness suddenly grows interested in testifying voluntarily and wants to let you know things that they remember differently from what they had told you at the initial interview, I'm always wary. But I knew Britt wasn't going to make things up. He'd buff a fact here or there to make it look a little better or different in his story, but he wouldn't make it up.

I said to Britt, "He threaten you? Bribe you? How did he get you into this? You about hung up on me last time."

Britt smiled. "No, he just started asking me a bunch of questions, one Marine to another. He was looking at something, I'm not sure what, maybe like his CV or something. He knew a lot about Collins already and just started asking me if I knew anything about when Collins was here, and when Collins was there."

I nodded. "So he stimulated some memories?"

"Not so much a memory as something that I heard."

"What'd you hear?"

Britt sat forward and leaned on the iron table with his elbows so he could not be overheard. Not that anyone else was around; we were the first people there. "Well, Mr. Byrd here asked me if I knew anything about Collins's Purple Heart. I had forgotten he had a Purple Heart."

"Is that from Desert One?" I asked.

"No. That's the thing. He wasn't wounded in Desert One. This was from the time he was the executive officer of a forty-six squadron in Iraq. During the siege of Fallujah."

I didn't even know Collins had a Purple Heart from Falluja. I was all ears. "What happened?"

"Well, you know how there's sometimes the official version, and then there's the other version?"

"Sure."

"Well, the official version is that Captain America was flying forty-sixes under fire evacuating wounded Marines. Took a severely wounded Marine out of a combat zone and while flying away took an AK-47 round right in the jaw. Bleeding like a stuck pig, he continued to fly, got his wounded Marine to the aid station, where he checked him in and was admitted himself, then later was flown to Germany for surgery."

"And what's the real story?"

"The real story is that the week before he got shot, he had braced up a Marine captain for flying through a prohibited zone to get a wounded Marine back to the base in time to save his life. If he'd gone around, the guy probably would have died. That didn't matter to Collins. The standing order was what mattered. You didn't fly through the prohibited zone no matter what. It endangered one of his precious thirty-year-old helicopters.

"All the other pilots in the squadron thought Collins was out of his mind. The captain's helicopter took a few rounds, but nobody got hurt. Collins went postal, but the other pilots in the squadron thought Collins should put the guy in for a medal. Collins refused. Said he was lucky not to be brought up on charges for violating the standing order. So, get this, the ground troops, the battalion from where the guy was rescued, they put the captain up for a medal.

"Then, the very next week, Collins himself is flying through the prohibited zone. No call for medevac, he's just tooling around flying through the zone like John Wayne 'cause he feels like it. And he gets shot in the face and his crew chief gets shot in the leg. Collins flies himself to the medical evacuation and puts himself in for a Purple Heart and for an Air Medal. The Air Medal didn't go anywhere 'cause everybody knew what had happened, but he got the Purple Heart because he was 'wounded in action.'

"He went to Germany for facial surgery, where they did a partial jaw replacement with a titanium jawbone. He got sent back to his squadron while it was still in Iraq. So behind his back everybody started calling him T-Jaw. His officers were not impressed, and they thought he was a complete self-promoting jerk. From what I understand, that kind of conduct was pretty typical."

I was stunned. I had never heard this story. Talk like this got around in the Marine Corps. "How is it I've never heard this before?"

Britt shrugged. "Probably people were a little wary of passing it on. It could have torpedoed his career. Marines love bravery, they love real men. They love taking one in the chest for the Corps. But what they hate, as you well know, is a self-serving, self-promoting asshole who is only looking out for his own career." Britt took a deep drink from his coffee. "People didn't know for sure what had happened. Nobody was really there except for a couple of people. It was virtually impossible to sort it out. But I heard it. Always in the superhushed 'promise not to tell anybody' kind of talk. But I heard it from a couple of sources. I don't know if it's true, but that's what I heard."

"How did the people who were checking out his background for his job flying Marine One-how did they not hear about this?"

"They may have, they may have given him the chance to answer it. Maybe he had a good explanation, maybe he said that the rumor was started by other Marine pilots who were envious, who thought he'd gotten promoted too quickly above others. Maybe he wasn't outside the flight area and someone just tacked that onto the story to bang him for the way he treated that captain. Don't know. Lots of possibilities. You know how that can start. Someone thinks you're bypassing them in the promotion ranks? It's not unheard of that they'll start a false rumor."

"So which is it? Was it a false rumor or did that happen? Is T-Jaw a fraud?"

Britt shrugged. "I don't know, I'm just telling you what I heard."

I looked at Byrd, who was staring at Britt. I asked him, "What do you think, Tinny?"

"Beats the hell out of me. I just thought you should hear what the man had to say. But I tell you what. The more I learn about this guy, the more cracks I see in the marble statue."

I stood up and Britt followed me to his feet. "Thanks for coming down. You didn't have to come all this way."

"No, I had to meet with a subcontractor based here. It's no problem."

He walked to his car and drove off as Byrd and I sat back down. The sky was a bright blue with golden morning sunlight illuminating the city. We could hear the lanyards of the moored sailboats two blocks away slapping against their masts as they rocked with the incoming tide.

"Tinny, I think we have to keep digging."

"I'm deeper than you know."

"One thing continues to haunt me here."

"What's that?"

"Why the hell was the president going to Camp David?"

Byrd nodded as he tossed his cup away. He zipped up his leather valise and said, "You know I'm already on that. That's one of the things that's a little bit deeper. I haven't hit the wood of the buried chest yet, but my shovel's getting close to the lid."

"How do you know there is a chest, how do you know there's a lid at all? How do you know it wasn't just some poker game with a bunch of school buddies?"

"Or strippers."

"Oh, right. The president was risking his life to fly to a stag party. Come on."

"Something big was happening. I'm talking to that other Marine. Boy from the Secret Service."

"The one our friend from State told us to lay off of."

"The same."

"You're not laying off, I take it."

Byrd frowned in disgust. "You want me to?"

"No. But Thompson seemed pretty damned serious and stayed real vague about the consequences."

"Said he'd tell people. So what?"

"Well, the implication is those other people might try to stop us."

"They can just kiss my ass. I'm not stopping for anyone."

I smiled. "So what did he say?"

"Turns out he was at Camp David that night."

"You said that. Waiting for President Adams."

"Yep."

"And?"

"That's all we know. He won't talk. Our Mr. Thompson has visited him. Told him to shut his mouth. National security."

"So that's it?"

"I'll keep pushing him. But there's no telling if he's going to come around. Thompson is pulling a lot of strings and talking to a lot of people. We need to watch out for him." Byrd rubbed his finger on the table. "I asked him about this mystery document." Tinny paused. "I saw it in his eyes, Michael. I think he still has it, or a copy. Whatever it is. I've got a feeling about him. Not only does he know a lot, I think he's dying to tell us. But there are forces out there, Michael, forces." Tinny looked at his watch. "I gotta go. Catch you later." He looked around for any unusual movement and headed toward his car.